


pawn

by cheolhie



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Cheating, Fluff, Heartbreak, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Poetry, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Smoking, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 06:17:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12006822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheolhie/pseuds/cheolhie
Summary: "The devil is real. He's not a red man with horns and a tail. He is beautiful. He is a fallen angel, and he used to be God's favourite."





	pawn

**Author's Note:**

> enjoy ! :)

He had let him in. 

Seungcheol had opened the dams without a boat to ride the wave and had begun to drown. The currents were unforgiving and had dragged him down into Jeonghan’s tsunami, his heart smashing against the rocks and his strength bleeding into the cloudy water.

“You're dancing with the devil, Seungcheol. Look what he's doing to you.” 

The smoke had curled around his tongue as he'd watched Mingyu from across the table. The cigarette between his thin fingers was burning out faster than he'd have liked. He blew smoke in Mingyu’s face.

“Don't say that. He's not the fucking devil. The devil isn't real.” He’d tapped ash onto the table top, an ugly grimace on his face. His hands shook as he brought the cigarette to his lips again.

“The devil is real, but he's not a red man with horns and a tail. He's beautiful, Seungcheol. He's a fallen angel and he used to be God's favourite. He's temptation personified, and you're playing right into his outstretched hand.” Mingyu had reached out to Seungcheol, who stubbed out his half finished cigarette on the table and walked away.

Jeonghan had an expensive taste for fine art and unwrinkled clothing. He’d had a high rise flat in the middle of the city that was lavish with oil paintings framed with ornate carvings and scattered with unmarked white furniture. Seungcheol had found a home in Jeonghan and hung his name on the back of his tongue like the artworks hung on the clean white walls of his living room. Jeonghan was just as tempting as Mingyu had mused and Seungcheol had dragged him down onto the clean sofa without a second thought.

Jeonghan had Seungcheol wrapped around his finger. He was alluring, with his large eyes surrounded in long lashes, and fingernails cutting beautiful crescents into Seungcheol's thighs. His kisses were oceans, flooding his lungs and rushing through his veins, but he was an addict and Jeonghan was his heroin, and he was hooked on the high he lived on so carelessly.

Jeonghan had a way with people.

He had doe eyes and a teasing smile that'd draw people in, like a sailor to a siren. His smooth words and soft laugh would bring them crashing against the rocks, their short lived bliss torn away abruptly. Seungcheol had knowingly dived into the swollen ocean and treaded water for eternity before sinking slowly, water flooding his lungs.

“Seungcheol, you're a dead man walking. You're fucking obsessed with him, let it go.” Mingyu didn't understand, Seungcheol had thought. He had rattled out to Seungcheol every waking moment that he was in his line of vision, and the elder was tired.

“Not all addicts are dead men, only the stupid ones.”

He hadn't seen Mingyu in months.

One day, Jeonghan had come home in the small hours of the morning, where the only sound was of the wind tapping on the windows and the fridge humming through the thin walls of the high rise flat. Seungcheol was sitting in his room when he realised that his lover wasn't alone.

They'd crashed into the couch in a storm of kisses and touches, and Seungcheol listened, his skin alight, trails of fire running down his back as if Jeonghan was running his fingers down _his_ back and not the back of the man supposedly hovering above him on the spotless leather sofa in the next room. When he'd awoke the next morning, the man was gone and Jeonghan was cheerful, a thick layer of foundation patched across his collarbone. Seungcheol ignored it, joining the twisted game the younger had planned out for him.

Seungcheol called Mingyu and took him out drinking one night.

The younger man had been oblivious to his place in the twisted game played by the venomous lovers. He was a pawn and Seungcheol was moving him carelessly around the board of his doomed relationship. He had let Seungcheol pay for his drinks and push him into the toilet stall behind the bar, the smell of alcohol rolling off of their tongues. Seungcheol's lips were fire against his and he’d let him light a blazing trail down his neck and across his collarbones. His hands traced across his hip bones and pressed deep bruises into the pale skin showing above his elastic waistband. Mingyu had laced his fingers with Seungcheol’s and dragged him out of the club. Hardly thirty minutes later Mingyu had found himself pressed into the white leather sofa in Jeonghan’s living room.

“But Jeonghan- We can’t, Seungcheol.” He’d spread his hands across the older man's chest to hold him back.

“He’s away. He’s out. Want you, Mingyu.” Each word, punctuated with the connection of a kiss down Mingyu’s torso, burnt into his skin and crawled around his chest. He had let his hand fall and shut his eyes, back curved in a beautiful arch towards Seungcheol, whose warm hold was twisting Mingyu into the perfect piece to play with in his game. Seungcheol’s leg was in between Mingyu’s thighs and his hands were on his hips and lips on his stomach and Mingyu had blocked out everything but the fingers trailing across his bare figure.

Jeonghan had awoke the next morning to an empty bed and the echos of Seungcheol’s voice clouding his mind. He’d found a cheerful Seungcheol at the kitchen counter accompanied by a cup of coffee and a thick layer of foundation down his neck. The older man’s words had glided well over his head as he’d set about making coffee. The image of Seungcheol's figure hovering so carefully over Mingyu’s was etched into the back of Jeonghan’s eyelids from where he had watched from his room, the creak from the bedroom door a whisper compared to the melody of kisses across heated skin. He sat at the table and hid behind his hair.

Jeonghan had begun to bring home an assortment of men every night, like a bouquet that wilted as the sun rose. There were so many. They varied in height and hair colour and their smiles were all different, but they all had one thing in common, one thing that Jeonghan dragged them home because of. They all obliged to every tilt of his head and flick of his fingers. They were willing to give Jeonghan all of their control and fall apart below him. Jeonghan had craved power and control in the midst of his failing relationship with Seungcheol, and the only way he could get it was lacing his hands with another mans and pushing him to his knees. He envisioned Seungcheol crumbling beneath him with soft puffs of breath as the men below him did, but Seungcheol always held the reins. He'd drag his fingers through Jeonghan’s long hair and pull him about, arms flexing and lips parted as Jeonghan would submit, albeit blindly.

And every sunrise Seungcheol and Jeonghan would sit at the kitchen bench, opposite to one another, playing blind to the flourish of marks painted across their skin that they'd long since given up on hiding.

“I will throw that god forsaken packet of fucking cigarettes off of this stupid bridge if you don't stop smoking one after the fucking other, Choi Seungcheol.” Mingyu had still been visiting Seungcheol after dark, continuously blind to the elders antics. He’d watched as Seungcheol sat on the railing and flicked his unlit cigarette over the edge.

“Happy?”

“Over the fucking moon.”

Seungcheol had returned that night to the flat, expecting Jeonghan’s silhouette kneeled on the couch, but instead found him seated at the kitchen bench, a mug of cheap wine in his hand. He stood, unnoticed, in the doorway for a while. The moon rose, stretching out the shadows and making Jeonghan's swaying figure shrink. In a sudden cacophony of noise and movement, the half empty mug in the younger man's hand had gone flying at the splash back above the oven, dark red wine dripping onto the white floor. Seungcheol's head filled with noise as Jeonghan slumped pathetically over the bench, shoulders heaving. His heart had thumped in his throat as he watched. A few long minutes later, and his legs, filled with lead, had dragged him towards Jeonghan's silhouette, heavy footsteps echoing around the large room.

His hands had grasped his waist roughly and he'd kissed him, hot and heavy, tongue slipping into his mouth and teeth grazing along his bottom lip. Jeonghan had pressed himself into Seungcheol and let out a small whimper, setting Seungcheol on fire. He'd pulled away and dragged Jeonghan onto the couch, the silver moonlight casting a beautiful glow atop his high cheekbones. Seungcheol had sat staring, his chest heaving and dark hair curled on his long lashes as he watched Jeonghan. He sucked in his beauty and his image, burning it into his mind, every last detail.

Jeonghan was sat on Seungcheol's thighs, hands splayed against his chest and long hair swept into his face. He was glowing, cheeks dusted with rose and lips swollen and wet. The dim light was stretching his lashes into black shadows across his face and Seungcheol wanted to sit forever with Jeonghan's body pressed against his. But he instead had slid his broad hands up Jeonghan's slight frame and pulled him into his body, sweat sticking to skin and lips skimming across every inch of skin visible. Jeonghan's body had shined and Seungcheol had dragged his tongue up his bare torso, temptation getting the better of him as he took the devil's outstretched hand.

And he'd have been lying if the sounds that had rolled off of Jeonghan's tongue and out of his open mouth weren't beautiful, if they weren't enough to keep him hot and sweaty for weeks afterwards. He'd have been lying if the feeling of nails dragging down his back and setting crescent moons into his shoulders was an uncomfortable burn. He'd wanted Jeonghan to slice open his skin and leave a permanence to forever remind Seungcheol of his time spent dancing with the devil. He'd picked the forbidden fruit from the tree and never wanted to forget its sweet taste, rid of consequence.

And it'd gone as normal as it could have for a few months. The marks on his neck were only from his own lover and no one else's, the body beneath his one and the same, the fingers laced between his never changing, only fitting perfectly. And he'd believed it wouldn't change. He'd finished the fruit and its sweet taste sat on his tongue, and he believed that he'd be tasting it forever. But the tree wilted and the taste became sour as he watched Jeonghan fall away into a thousand pieces, scattered between many who'd not care to patch him up. He’d begun to smell like alcohol and cigarettes, losing his warmth.

The temptation in his veins was running short and his mind had traveled elsewhere, eyes hazy and words distant. Seungcheol fell out of love but covered it up with kisses across Jeonghan's chest in his many drunken stupors as they collided and fell together. He was Prometheus; forever under torment, his being ripped from himself every day as he watched Jeonghan drag himself to the fridge for another drink, and then restored as Jeonghan would become _himself_ again under his hot touch.

Eventually Seungcheol fell away with Jeonghan. He’d stopped touching him, stopped speaking, stopped looking. Their silences had become heavy.

Seungcheol had ransacked the flat on their last night together. He took the alcohol and poured it over the balcony as Jeonghan sat silent on the counter top, an unlit cigarette between his blue lips. Cold lips, untouched, unkissed. Seungcheol ignored it. He’d taken the packet from Jeonghan's open hand and thrown it over with the alcohol. Then he had grabbed his bag from beside the sofa and walked out, the unlit cigarette still between Jeonghan's lips as he stared at the splash back opposite him in the empty kitchen.

His temptation had faltered as Jeonghan had crumbled and the fallen angel had lost his beauty. Seungcheol had left, setting out to repair the dam he'd opened up and washed himself out with.

The tree had wilted but another had grown.

_"The devil is real. He's not a red man with horns and a tail. He is beautiful. He is a fallen angel, and he used to be God's favourite."_

**Author's Note:**

> [my twt](https://twitter.com/08cult)


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